War in Heaven

18

It was like being born. There was light and pain and fire. Everything about me that was weak — all the fear, the self-loathing, the crippling reliance on other weaklings — was burned out of me. It was the liberation that comes from surgery of the soul.

I had no idea how long I had been out but they had moved. They had run. Even as deluded as they were, they must have understood the pointlessness of hiding. It was only a matter of time before they were found and either destroyed or healed in the black fire.

I tried my internal comms. Nothing. They’d actually been removed. I glanced down at my side and saw the gel over the surgical scar where they had removed the transponder. I cursed silently.

I was in the inevitable cave. It was small. The mouth of the cave was covered by a tarpaulin that moved slightly in the subterranean wind. I could just about hear water over the sound of Rannu screaming at someone that he was going to cut off their genitals and sew them into their mouth. In Latin. I smiled, hoping that someone had the education to appreciate obscenities screamed in a dead language. I doubted it.

I was lying on a cot stained with dried blood. My knee, face and other wounds were covered by medgels. I felt like peeling them off like scabs. I was healing quickly but I reached out to the alien bio-nanites in my system with a thought and reprogrammed them to heal me faster. They were so primitive without the ingenuity of humanity to upgrade them. The fact that we could render an entire alien species into nothing more than a technology to improve ourselves was a sure sign of our superiority and right to dominate.

I was immobilised with very secure-looking manacles. Heavy chains had been driven into the rock. The manacles had been welded tight over my wrists and ankles. I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. I hoped this wasn’t going to come down to anything as sordid as soiling myself and attempting to hit visitors with projectile vomit.

The tarpaulin was pushed to one side as a worried-looking Pagan and Mudge stepped into the cave. I tried to form a mask of concern and fear.

‘Guys, what’s going on? Where the fuck are we? Who’s that screaming? And why am I chained up?’

‘What’s the last thing you remember, Jakob?’ Pagan asked.

‘The heist.’ I widened my eyes. ‘The Grey Lady… Fuck! What’s going on?!’ I tried to remember what being constantly afraid was like and put it into my voice.

‘You were captured,’ Pagan told me. The look of concern on his face was so pathetic I wanted to spit at him. I saw his empty skin bulge and move. One of the flies that animated his corpse crawled across his face.

‘I don’t…’

‘Remember anything?’ Mudge said, sounding angry.

‘What happened?’

‘You killed a whole lot of the Kiwis including Dog Face,’ Mudge told me.

Shit, only Dog Face. Why had Demiurge made Dog Face look like Rolleston? Perhaps it was something to do with them both using claws.

‘Morag?’ I asked. The anxious, frightened tone I heard in my own voice made me want to vomit. I almost did when I saw the look of sadness on Pagan’s face.

‘I’m sorry, Jakob…’ he said.

I tried to remember what it was like. The pantomime of emotions I should display.

‘No…’ A touch of horror initially, I thought. I mixed it with the denial. It rang false in my own ears, however. I wanted to laugh as I saw blood start to run down the cave wall.

‘Spare us, we’ve already been through this with Rannu. You can start your tasteful ravings about genitalia in Latin now if you want. We’re not letting you go,’ Mudge said.

My expression of mock pain became laughter. Pagan shook his head in pity. This angered me. There was nothing for a broken old man like him to pity here. He was in the presence of an ascended being. I imagined the pair of them broken down to their constituent parts, kept alive by technology, sewn together, linked to a biofeedback device so they could feel each other, forced to sing in agony. I felt myself getting hard.

‘Well, I cannot be killed but my body here can, so either holding me indefinitely or killing me are your only options.’ I focused on Mudge. ‘You’re not going to kill me, Mudge, are you? We were such good friends.’ All mock pleading.

‘You feel nothing at all for Morag?’ Pagan asked.

‘Yes, I do. I’m not a monster. She was a good fuck. I built her up. I was looking forward to tearing her back down, making her less than what she was when I found her. There’s nothing sadder than a vocational victim who thinks they’re actually a person. Don’t believe me? I bet she makes a pretty corpse. You should use her. The closest you were ever going to get with your paternal lechery, old man.’

Pagan flinched like he’d been hit.

‘Oh please. I’m just saying what we’ve all been thinking. It’s so liberating to finally tell the truth. Don’t you think?’

‘You bastard,’ Pagan spat at me. ‘You didn’t build anything. Everything she was she made herself.’

‘I can see why you’d be uncomfortable with me fucking an abused teenager to self-improvement. It’s almost taking advantage of her, isn’t it? Still none of you ever really said anything, did you?’

I was thoroughly enjoying the chance to be so honest. I was also enjoying the look of revulsion on Pagan and Mudge’s faces because I knew inside they were feeling a kernel of doubt, of self-loathing because they were weak. More to the point, they knew I was telling the truth.

I watched Mudge’s skin peel back as he screamed, then the flesh split and opened down to the bone. He looked like a dissected frog.

‘You keep talking like that, and you’re just going to make Jakob feel like twice the arsehole when we get him back,’ Pagan said.

‘Ignore him. He’s just trying to get a reaction,’ Mudge told Pagan. ‘That’s not Jakob; it’s a puppet with Demiurge’s hand up his arse.’

‘I bet you’d love that, wouldn’t you, faggot?’

Amusingly it was Pagan who flinched when he heard the word. Mudge laughed but it was without humour.

‘That the best you can do? Adolescent classroom jibes? I’ve heard it before. It’s an old word, meaningless. It’s pretty much only used by throwbacks now.’

I smiled at the irony of someone like him calling me a throwback.

‘But you’ve heard it before, haven’t you? Hurt, didn’t it? Used at bad times? Poor Mudge, your life’s just one long bit of overcompensation, isn’t it?’

‘Suddenly you’re so insightful.’ Sarcasm, but I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t happy.

‘How’s your nigger lover?’

‘Another old word? You sound like that arsehole Messer in Crawling Town.’

But he couldn’t hide a flinch when I said it. I didn’t use the word because of the difference in skin tone between Merle and myself but because of the hatred that it engenders. A racist is a fool who underestimates his tribal opponent. Racism is a position of fear, a racist is someone who tries to buoy themself at others’ expense. Hatred and violence are our natural states, our fragment of divinity. Each of us is an island, unconnected, an unending reservoir of hatred against others, and if we’re weak, ourselves. Total, undifferentiated, constant violence against everyone should be our ambition as it is our birthright. Violence is the only self-expression that means anything. Hatred is the only meaningful, truthful emotion. It is all we truly understand. The rest is a facade we erect so we can play in the lie of so-called civilisation. People sell their children for drugs and they call it civilisation. When will we stop lying to ourselves?

‘Really, how is he?’

‘A little less pretty but he enjoyed kicking your arse. Which reminds me. Pagan and I are the only people keeping you alive here. Mother and her people want you dead and Merle wants you dead, so if you want to continue your existence then you may want to try being a little more fucking co-operative.’

I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh.

‘What do you think is happening here?’

‘We want Jakob back,’ Pagan told me earnestly.

‘Does this sound like someone’s met a rogue program in the net and got their neural ware a bit fucked up?’ I demanded.

Pagan shook his head miserably. I watched his skin blacken and burn. It started to melt and run, the flesh beneath it charring.

‘You’re not going to dress this up in outdated religious terms and try to change me back to the frightened fucking mess I was. We haven’t been brainwashed, you deluded old fuck. It was a revelation. Come to fucking terms with the fact that I am Jakob.’

‘You sure you want to narrow your options like that?’ Mudge acting the hard man made me laugh.

‘Or we could get you out,’ Pagan told me.

‘Really? You know how to do that?’ It was written all over their faces that they didn’t have a clue. ‘There is nothing to remove. There is only Jakob. So what are you going to do? Kill me? Keep me here? Let me go? Like any of those?’

No answer, just grim expressions.

‘Or you can join us?’

Mudge started laughing. ‘Are you fucking nuts? I’d rather suck Rolleston’s cock.’

‘Hey, everything’s possible,’ I told them. Though I really couldn’t see it happening. ‘Think about it. All the pain, all the fear is over. Finally you could be part of something that actually matters, building something instead of being disaffected outsiders raging against it all.’

‘Yeah, that’s not going to happen,’ Mudge said. He was hunched over, forced to stoop as muscles contracted so hard they cracked bone, becoming smaller and weaker as he tried to speak to me.

‘So what are you going to do? Kill your old friend? Possibly the only person in the world who can tolerate you for extended periods of time?’

‘You’d kill me in a heartbeat at the moment,’ he replied.

He was right. I was thinking about opening his throat with my teeth if he got close enough.

‘That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Make us kill the body of our friend? Damage the morale a bit more. Get the most out of their Jakob-shaped weapon? Rolleston and friends are really going for the pain now, aren’t they?’

‘It’s just psych ops,’ Pagan said unconvincingly.

‘No, it’s hate by any means necessary, isn’t it?’ Mudge asked me. I chose not to answer him ‘Well, you’ve had your fun but I’ve got some bad news. When the end comes we’ll have a stranger kill you.’

‘See if you can run far enough that you don’t hear the gunshot, old friend.’

Mudge and Pagan turned and left the cave. I waited.

I was staring at the hunched, blue-skinned hag with the tombstone teeth and the long, vicious-looking black claws that reminded me of an angry Rolleston. I’d failed. She was still alive.

‘How?’

‘You hit me dead centre. On the helmet. One round grazed my head, almost killed me.’ Even reborn, her gravelly, broken-glass voice still bothered me.

Demiurge had shown me the Grey Lady. The Grey Lady does not wear a helmet and I had taken a head shot. Still it must have been close.

‘Why did they lie?’ I asked.

‘I think it was a last-ditch attempt to see if there was something left of Jakob.’

I started laughing when she said this.

‘I am Jakob.’

She laughed back at me. It was like nails down a blackboard.

‘I don’t think so.’

I had fought as hard as I could. I even tasted some of Pagan’s blood when I bit into his arm, clean through his subcutaneous armour. I probably did myself more harm than I did to him but it was satisfying to feel his warm blood in my mouth and over my face. They had still managed to get the jack into one of my plugs. Which is of course exactly what I wanted.

It was a new environment. An open airy room in what felt like an old city. The room was high up, looking down a hill at a tangle of ancient streets and alleys, over rooftops and spires. There was a morning breeze but wherever it was supposed to be was obviously a warm country. I heard morning prayer as the sun rose as a burning red ball. I was pretty sure we were in the Middle East somewhere. Or rather we were in a sanctum or some other well-rendered net simulation of a city in the Middle East back on Earth.

Pagan was there in his traditionalist Druidic icon. He looked like a delusional fool in some child’s viz, a romantic, a wishful thinker. Both he and Morag had glyphs of light appearing and disappearing in front of them. It wouldn’t help.

I was sitting on a simple chair at a simple table. There was a glass of water on the table and that was all. Around the table and the chair was a circle of light suspended about six inches off the floor. I’m guessing that this was the containment program.

Idiots. Invading systems was the first trick I learned. I could break through any security. I sent out just a little black tendril of flame. I was going to lock their minds in here. Play with time compression and put them both into a torture loop while I dealt with the others. Then I was going to come back and play with Morag for a while. Until she understood what she was in my presence. The fools had handed themselves to me.

The circle of light flared and stopped the black fire dead. It was my second unpleasant surprise of the day. Black Annis turned back to look at me with a raised eyebrow over the pools of her eyes.

‘Do you think we’re idiots?’ she asked.

‘Well I only have my past experiences to judge you by. The Maoris’ net?’

They said nothing. Where did he get that piece of code? It had to be the aberrations?

‘Still I’m pleased to see you’re alive after we meant so much to each other,’ I told her.

‘That would explain the shooting.’

‘Love hurts, and at the risk of sounding petty you shot me first.’

‘You deserved it.’

‘What, for fucking Fiona? So you mean you’ll shoot me again if I tell you I fucked Josephine?’ I leaned back in the chair and smiled.

Pagan stopped what he was doing. Black Annis looked up at me and unexpectedly smiled.

‘We’re not killing Jakob no matter what stories you make up,’ she told me.

‘I’ll fuck you in the hag form if that’s what you want, but wouldn’t it be better if you’re the sweet little Maiden of Flowers. Don’t pretend you’re not a victim — it doesn’t become you and we both know I’m not lying.’

Pagan looked at Black Annis uncertainly but Black Annis went back to her work, still smiling.

‘She’s better than you, you know? More skilled, more feeling, more impassioned,’ I told her.

‘Should’ve stayed with her then.’ I could hear her teeth grinding together.

‘No, I had to get back here to you. That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it? Fear of abandonment. Your sister left; your mother sold you; I left for a quick fuck with some posh bitch. Poor little Morag McGrath.’

Black Annis looked up at me. ‘Do you think you’re the first guy I’ve slept with who’s said bad things to me? Mudge was right: you’re a fucking cliche.’

‘Morag, I’m your wet dream. I am exactly what you want.’ More nails down a blackboard as she laughed. ‘I suspect you are one of the most unwanted people who has ever lived. I think there are back-alley abortions who’ve been more wanted than you.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ Pagan spat at me.

‘Why do you love her? Want her?’ I asked him.

‘She is a valued member of…’ He faltered, realising how weak it sounded.

There was a flash of irritation as Morag glanced at him.

I turned on him. ‘Oh bullshit, Pagan. Why am I the only one telling the truth here? All your mentoring, your paternal care, when you’re not accusing her of being an alien whore of course. Just waiting for the Elektra Complex to kick in, weren’t you, so she could come and play with the daddy who also abandoned her. You don’t care about her. She’s a commodity, a cunt and a beautiful body. That’s all you care about. Just like everyone else.’

‘That’s not-’ Pagan began.

‘Shut up, Pagan,’ Black Annis told him. ‘I don’t need validation. I know who I am and how people feel about me.’

‘So why did I sleep with the Grey Lady?’

‘Because you’re sick.’

‘It was the old weak Jakob who did it, and you know that.’

‘She raped him.’ Black Annis was sounding less sure of herself now.

I just looked at her. She knew the truth.

‘Is the sum purpose of your evil machinations to try and get me to cry?’ she asked. Angrier now.

‘We both know you will. Or rather you would do if you still could, but you’re selling your humanity so you can be more like me, aren’t you?’

‘Fuck you, you’re not human. You’re a computer program someone made up.’

‘Yes.’ I looked at Pagan. ‘He did.’ Bang. Even on the icon guilt was written all over his face. ‘Hi, Dad. Want to abuse the old patriarchal authority with me as well? Actually you’re a great parental figure, aren’t you? How’s God doing? Moping and suicidal last I heard.’

‘I think we should try and ignore him, get on with it,’ Pagan said. He almost sounded like he meant it.

‘Look, I realise you feel like this big all-encompassing evil but really you’re just a bit fucking irritating at the moment,’ Morag told me.

That angered me. She was going to suffer a lot.

‘I’m sorry, darling. What I was trying to say before Daddy dearest interrupted was that it’s okay. Even though you’re shit in bed in comparison with drunk posh girls and assassins, not only will I take you back but I can give you what you want.’ Morag just laughed and shook her head, ropey black hair swinging from side to side as she tried to ignore me. ‘See, I worked it out. You’ve been systematically raped since you were however old you were when Mummy dearest sold you. I mean I know we call it prostitution and we tell ourselves it’s okay because we pay — it’s just like a job, isn’t it — but I know what it was for you. Worse still, you have to pretend you like it for the punter. You must have been good at that because you were in the high-end part of the Forbidden Pleasure, not in the cargo containers working the turnstiles. I guess you just got to like it, didn’t you? That’s why you spread your legs for me and for Ambassador. Open your mind. Open your legs. What’s the difference? It’s just another invasion, another violation, isn’t it, Morag? But I’ll take you back. I’ll use you; I will fucking hurt you so much; I will brutalise you; I will even pimp you out, though I’ll struggle to go lower than an alien and you’ll want me too. I promise you.’ I leaned back smiling.

Both of them were staring at me, anger and hatred obvious on their faces. That was good. Good for them. See if they could embrace it, live pure, free of their hypocrisies and lies.

I was sure it would be Morag. After all, I’d gone to the dark place where we all sometimes live. Well, not me any more. But it was Pagan who broke. Who did what I wanted him to do.

‘Bastaaard!’ I didn’t think it was possible for an icon to look that angry. He really was a very good programmer but weak. That was okay, we could fix him. White lightning played around the tip of his staff. It was an attack that would probably fry most hackers so badly their heads would catch fire, but all it was going to do was break the circle and I would eat their fucking souls.

Black Annis grabbed Pagan before he could activate the attack program and slammed him into the stone wall of the room. Glyphs buzzed around them as she shut down his program. A display of raw power that I’m sure wasn’t lost on Pagan. I was sure that he was so close to being a broken man.

‘If you don’t have the discipline to ignore what are only words, then get out. I’ll finish up.’ It was like listening to rocks grind together as she hissed that at him. I had been so close. ‘That is exactly what he wants. Someone to break the circle.’

He couldn’t face her. What sort of idiot writes the ability to look overcome by anguish into his own icon? They should live large. It’s not like it’s real after all. She let him go and he just seemed to sag against the wall. She turned to stare at me. The things I wanted to do to her then.

The door opened and another well-rendered icon walked in. I was surprised. The icon looked old, older even than Pagan. Again, why would someone make themself look old in here? He wore a long linen shirt and linen trousers. Over the shirt he had a kind of waistcoat decorated in brocade. The fabric skull cap on his head also had a brocade pattern running around it and he wore a simple pair of sandals. In the early-morning sun the white linen seemed to glow. He looked over at Black Annis and Pagan.

‘I think it would be better if you left,’ he said. His voice was cultured and educated. The accent was definitely from somewhere in the Middle East back on Earth. Black Annis nodded. The hag and the Druid looked so ridiculously out of place with this man.

‘We’re done anyway. You understand the rules?’ Black Annis asked through grinding stone.

‘I think so. Don’t break the circle,’ the man said. We’ll see.

Black Annis didn’t spare me a look as she practically led Pagan out. He did though. Pagan turned to stare at me and there was hate and anger but defeat also. Morag may have managed to control it in here but she was going to burst into tears as soon as she left the net.

The man pulled a chair up opposite mine. Of course he didn’t break the circle.

‘I think it’s much easier to upset the people you know and love,’ he said.

‘You know I don’t love them.’

‘You? No, but Jakob does, and that gives you insight. I find it interesting that the only power you have over them comes from your love for them and their love for you. Twisted of course but nonetheless…’

‘Really? That’s your opening salvo? Love is power?’ I couldn’t keep the scorn from my voice, not that I was trying terribly hard.

He laughed. ‘Yes, it does sound trite put that way. Easy to be cynical about, but even then it still holds true.’

‘So what are we doing here?’

‘We’re going to talk a little.’ You mean you’re going to run as many diagnostic programs and analytical routines as you can to try and get insight into me. ‘Then I am going to do some praying. I would ask you to join me but I can’t see that happening.’ Or rather you’re going to try and write code because you think the old weak Jakob is in here somewhere. He’s not. This is a fusion. I’m in the meat, not in the machine, old man, but you can find that out the hard way.

‘What should I call you? Exorcist?’ He laughed at this. ‘Would you be more comfortable if I looked like this?’ It was a simple change I made. The icon no longer looked like me. Instead I had become the beast. I saw his expression falter. Not because of the goat-headed form I took — that had long ago ceased to be frightening — but because of the control I had. Total control over my surroundings, with the exception of this fucking circle.

‘My name’s Salem,’ he said after he’d recovered quickly.

‘This your sanctum?’

‘A copy of part of it. We’re in an isolated system.’

Damn. Still I can’t pretend it’s a surprise.

‘Where’s it supposed to be?’

‘A place where I used to come to do my lessons when I was a boy in Jerusalem before the war.’

‘You really are old.’ He smiled. ‘And why are all you people so painfully sentimental?’

‘Connections, identity. I think it’s part of being comfortable with who you are.’

‘I could make you comfortable with who you are and with God.’

He just smiled. Too soon. We’d get to that later.

‘What’s this got to do with you?’ I asked.

‘It’s my duty.’

‘You are an exorcist then?’

‘I think it’s the duty of all to help when they can.’

‘Brilliant. If you could just break this circle, that would be really helpful.’

‘I am here to help Jakob.’

I leaned forward and formed the words very carefully. ‘I am Jakob. When will you people understand that? There is nothing wrong with me.’

‘You are an evil djinn who has taken over his body.’

‘That what your analysis programs are telling you?’

It was written all over his face that the answer was no.

‘You have the power of an ifreet-’

‘And you are a step away from a fucking witch doctor. Why don’t you shake some monkey bones over me?’

He flinched at the swearing. Good, I liked delicate sensibilities.

‘It’s just terminology. Do you really think that I do not know what you are?’

‘Who I am is Jakob Douglas, and no, you don’t have a clue. If you did you wouldn’t fucking be here.’

‘Is there need for swearing?’

‘Go fuck yourself.’

‘It just diminishes you.’

I would have loved to stop talking to the sanctimonious prick. His constantly calm demeanour was beginning to piss me off, but I needed an in. Some way to anger him enough that he would go for me.

‘I see refuge in Allah from the pride, poetry and touch of Shaitan, the cursed,’ Salem said to himself.

I had to laugh. It was like something out of the Middle Ages. Still there was something about his words at a very basic level that I didn’t like.

‘You’re frightened?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘You are very dangerous.’

‘It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a real god coming, not a feel-good fantasy designed to justify hatred and violence-’

‘Something that hasn’t been an issue since the Final Human Conflict. The hatred and violence is entirely of the creation of your masters as far as I can tell.’

‘You interrupted me.’

‘I apologise.’ He actually looked contrite, as if manners mattered. I on the other hand was pissed off that I had lowered myself to speak to this superstitious caveman, to offer him a chance, and all he wanted to do was hear himself talk.

‘We offer a chance, the ultimate chance to belong, to be part of what humanity will become, and we are attacked for it. Unless of course you feel that humanity is doing fine now?’

‘I think it would be reductive to lay all the troubles of humanity at the feet of the Cabal. It is much more complex than that. But they have certainly played a significant part in humanity’s current state, don’t you think?’

‘Birth is always painful.’

‘Particularly when it’s poisoned.’

‘So what then? The abortion of humanity’s rebirth? We just remain in our animalistic state?’

‘I don’t think you can force these things.’

‘The only force is the result of resistance.’

‘Because some do not wish to live the way you do.’

‘No.’ This truly angered me. ‘That is not the reason for resistance; the reason is fear. All of us have a chance at something better, something more, and the throwbacks are too frightened of the unknown to embrace that. No attempt has been made to understand, only to lash out like spoilt children who do not get their way.’

Salem sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘This at least is progress. Please, I wish to understand. Tell me what we are frightened of.’

I smiled at him. ‘Then let me out.’

‘You know I will not do that.’

‘Then this is not a free exchange of ideas.’

‘Not when you hold this man Jakob prisoner.’

This was turning into an exasperating circle jerk.

‘I am Jakob, and I think you know that.’ I was getting angry now.

‘I think you have assimilated Jakob. At a fundamental level, against the laws of man and God, you have no right to do this. You must leave and I think you know this.’

It appeared they had sent in the world’s calmest man to speak to me. Where was Pagan when you needed him?

‘And your diagnostics must have told you by now that Jakob has ascended — he is something else now. Just as you know that deep down your god is only real as a net-bound hallucination, a hollow ghost in your neurones. We have something tangible to offer.’

I was imagining what this man’s insides would look like. What it would be like to make patterns with them, to wear them? Didn’t he realise that they are as nothing to us? They are tools, nothing more, and we are under no obligation to take them with us.

‘Old man, I know angels, holy terrors,’ I told him, frustrated.

‘You know fallen angels, nothing more.’

Then he smiled. He had found something.

‘What?’ I demanded. He ignored me. ‘Do you understand that we are at an evolutionary point for mankind? Your outdated folk beliefs are about to be superseded by something real.’

‘It is not real. It is a technological horror more in keeping with the inventions of Mary Shelley than with the creation of a god, but that is just my opinion and here is the problem when two people debate faith. You are not going to convince me that I am wrong because I have faith, and I am not going to convince you that you are wrong. In such a case, all we can do is strive to accept our differences and perhaps understand them.’ His calm demeanour grated on me as smugness.

‘I am not offering you faith; I am offering you proof. I am offering you the tangible and personnel connection to God that you, all you hackers, wish you had.’ It was like talking to a simple-minded savage.

‘I think for non-religious people it will always be impossible for you to understand that the connection you describe is a relationship we already have and already feel. It is as real and tangible to us as your net-bound technological creations are to you.’

‘Even though you know them to be a lie?’

‘Obviously I don’t know that. In fact I believe the opposite.’

‘Salem.’ I was becoming more and more exasperated. ‘Do you understand what I’m offering you? I am offering you the chance to be a new Muhammad here.’

‘I think you are offering me the chance to be the spokesperson for a lie.’ There was no hesitation there. His narrow-mindedness was total.

‘You understand that’s what you fucking are?!’ I was shouting at him now. I was so angry. His expression became more serious and considerably less benign.

‘There is only one god and Muhammad is his prophet.’

‘You walk among fallen people, infidels, you fucking hypocrite!’

‘Only God can give me understanding of my place in things. Only he can judge.’

‘He’s not fucking real!’ He flinched. ‘The closest you ever got was that fucking joke back on Earth.’

‘A misguided and blasphemously named program.’

‘The things you’ve seen aren’t what you think they are. Are you so fucking frightened that you reject out of hand anything that’s real in favour of this fantasy world?!’

‘All you are is us,’ he told me. ‘All you are is a prison, a complicated computer program with delusions of grandeur.’

I was on my feet now.

‘I think you’ll see what I am, medicine man!’ I screamed at him.

He looked at me with an expression of pity. What could be more inappropriate? He was less than bloodied shit before me.

‘Tell Morag I’m sorry!’ I continued screaming at him. No! Wait. I didn’t say that. Why would I say that? She was a vessel for my pleasures — another victim, nothing more.

Salem made a sobbing sound. No, it wasn’t him, it was me.

‘I will make your family watch your corpse being fucked!’

‘I have nothing to fear from you. Allah protects me.’

‘I will find everything you care about and destroy it! I will show you that your god is a lie! I will rape your children and their children in front of your eyes!’

I was battering myself against the circle, causing myself pain as energy coalesced around me where I hit the barrier program. Hating the feeling of impotence that had somehow replaced omnipotence in here. This barrier was not human programming.

‘All you have is fear. I am so sorry,’ Salem said.

I could hear it. Everything I said, everything I did, and it was me. I knew that. I could hear it but it sounded different and distorted like sound travelling through water.

I felt like an exotic bird, some rich corp exec’s pet in a gilded cage. The cage was decorated with engraved knot-work and was so exquisite, ornate and beautiful it didn’t look real. It was still a prison. It hung here suspended in total, impenetrable darkness.

It gave me time to consider what I’d done. The betrayal, Demiurge’s trickery and the murder I’d committed under its influence. The things I’d said to Mudge and Pagan. Morag.

In some ways I would have welcomed being the monster. Or rather joining the rest of me to merge with the monster. Though the best thing would have been a bullet through my skull. I had nothing to offer now but more pain and lies. It felt like an age since I’d been able to offer anything else. I didn’t understand why my friends were prolonging this.

I had fully underestimated just how angry Rolleston was with me. Exquisite wasn’t a word I used often but this was. Turn me into everything I hate. Use me as a weapon against those I love but keep enough of me conscious and imprisoned to appreciate what I was doing.

Did I sound calm? Most of the time all I did was scream. I slept when he slept and dreamt of nothing, only to wake and scream again.

But not now. Now I’m lying on the cold metal floor of my cage, curled in the foetal position, shaking and crying like a frightened child. I can hear myself raging at the holy man.

I feel something gritty against my skin. Something blows against me in the warm wind. There should be no wind in this void. I open my eyes. The floor of my cage is dusted in fine grains of sand. More is blowing in through the bars. I sit up and watch this wind from nowhere play with the sand, make patterns with it on the floor.

I am hollow. I have little strength left for any emotion other than hate and self-loathing. I have become the worst thing I could imagine. Fear seems redundant.

There is still a prickling at the back of my mind, perhaps deep in the lizard brain as it rises from the sand. It is a desert ghost in robes, its head wrapped in a shemagh, obscuring its features, if it has any. The ghost is formed of the sand and is constantly reforming as the wind blows granules out into the void.

‘What are you?’ I ask. My throat should be raw and bloody, but this isn’t the real world.

‘I am an intelligent computer virus with limited verbal responses. I am sorry but this will hurt. A lot.’ I think the language is Arabic but somehow I understand it. I recognise the holy man’s voice.

‘What will hurt?’

‘Kneel! That’s right. Kneel, you fuck!’ Muscles contort, my mouth enlarges, and anger, not control of my icon, makes me look bestial as I scream at this nothing prostrate before his fiction, facing east. ‘Face me! Face me, you fucking coward!’

He should be kneeling before me, that is right and proper, even if I am a caged god. He shouldn’t be kneeling before some fiction in the east.

I start to tell him what I will do to him and everything and everyone he cares about. People say that the details in these kinds of descriptions are just pornography, but I knew that they painted pictures in his head and he would see me exploring atrocity with everyone he loves. He thinks he’s praying now. We both know he’s hiding from me, too afraid to face me. Tone it down now. Whisper to him, more effective than the screaming.

I watch in horror as my left arm becomes mercury and leaks to the floor from the finger up to the shoulder. Then the fire comes. Then I really start to scream as agony surges through every particle of my being.

Fear, horror, disbelief. This cannot be happening to me. I am being diminished. This categorically cannot happen. Only I have the power here. Only me. I have to warn…

I am introduced to pain anew. I thought I’d been screaming. I hadn’t been screaming.

It must be like being born. There is light and pain, or agony to be precise, except I want to hide from the light. Crawl back into the dark, let them forget about me as I am assaulted by the memories of everything I’ve said and done.

‘Jakob?’ It is a kindly voice full of genuine concern. That makes it worse. I do not deserve it.

I try to back into the corner of the sunlit room. Salem reaches for me. I flinch away from him.

‘You’re free. The ifreet is gone.’ Reassuring. He doesn’t realise it is still me, still all me.

The door to the room opens. Black Annis. Don’t name her as Morag. Pagan is with her. They look out of place in this environment. Morag — no, Black Annis — stands in the doorway like judgement.

They walk towards me. Black Annis glances over at Salem, who nods. There is a look of concern on the old man’s face. She reaches for me. I try to cower away but my back is already against the cold stone wall. Her long-fingered, black-clawed hand touches me like death. Black lightning plays across my chest. I scream again as biofeedback surges into my body in the real world. Enough biofeedback to make my plugs smoke, enough to fry synapses, enough to stop even an augmented and mostly mechanical heart.

It’s like sinking into dark water. The last thing I hear is Pagan screaming, ‘No!’ and diving towards Morag. Way too slow, Pagan. She waited. Waited until it was me. This is good. I deserve this.